Ladies, gentlemen, and filmgoers everywhere, I am excited to deliver some very good news: January is over. It was a rough few weeks for cinephiles, as even small surprises were drowned out by disappointments among the new releases hitting theaters, but now the month best known for being a studio dumping ground has given way to February. It definitely came to an end with a whimper, as two new wide releases – Oz Perkins' Gretel & Hansel and Reed Morano's The Rhythm Section – failed to get any traction; but what was bad news for those titles wound up being great news for Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah's Bad Boys For Life, which grabbed the number one spot for the third week in a row.
Check out the numbers for all of the aforementioned releases, as well as the rest of the Top 10 movies of the weekend, by scoping out the chart below, and join me after for analysis!
I may have accentuated the negative in the grand scope above, but the truth is that Bad Boys For Life has really done well for itself since first hitting theaters in mid-January. It has yet to experience a weekend-to-weekend drop of more than 50 percent, as last week it only went down 45.6 percent, and this week's numbers mark a 48 percent decrease. While no other movie managed to score 11 figures in the past three days, the Will Smith-Martin Lawrence action flick did so with authority.
With the additional $17.7 million added to its coffers, the total bankroll for the movie here in North America is nearing $150 million (it will likely get there before Wednesday), and the numbers from markets abroad are very close. Bad Boys For Life has definitely turned out to be a successful venture for Sony, as the project had a $90 million budget (not including marketing and publicity), and has made more than three times that worldwide. More importantly for the company, it has proven that there is definitely a hunger for more adventures of Mike and Marcus, and sequel talks are on-going (though it makes it seriously unfortunate that they didn't go with something different for the title of the third movie, as they could have had Bad Boys 4 Life).
Widening the scope a bit, really this entire month has been great for the studio. Looking at that chart you'll see three different Sony titles, and two of them are December 2019 releases. Much like its predecessor, which hung around on the box office chart for months in 2018, Jake Kasdan's Jumanji: The Next Level is another monster hit that is approaching $750 million in ticket sales globally. Meanwhile, Greta Gerwig's Little Women isn't exactly putting up matching figures, but it will soon be crossing $100 million domestically, and remains the subject of tremendous buzz thanks to the six Academy Award nominations that it earned (and if it winds up winning in some key categories, you can definitely expect ticket sales to spike).
Steering back to Bad Boys For Life, it's certain that its reign at the top of the box office will definitely come to an end this week, as it won't have the juice to take down 2020's first major comic book movie, but I expect that it's still going to be floating around the chart for at least a few more weeks.
As mentioned, one of the principal reasons why Bad Boys For Life was able to succeed this past weekend was because the other new movies that came out didn't put up much of a fight – though Gretel & Hansel at the very least was able to crack the Top 5. It can't be called a devastating disappointment, as what we're talking about here is a tiny horror adaptation of a fairy tale, not a major blockbuster, but the money made from the movie's first three days in theaters probably only covers the production budget, and it's not likely that it sees some kind of big surge in ticket sales thanks to positive word of mouth. Critics have come out split on the feature, resulting in a 56 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes (as expressed in my own review of the film, I can't say I was a huge fan), and CinemaScore is reporting a "C-" grade.
At the very least The Rhythm Section can say it did better in that one arena, as the release has earned a "C+" grade from the audience survey service, but the weekend was less successful in pretty much every other way. As you can see, the action movie starring Blake Lively only barely made it on to the Top 10 this week – and it wouldn't have if Rian Johnson's Knives Out had made $50,001 more in the last three days. As we reported earlier, it's actually a record-breaking flop, with the numbers making it the least successful opening in history for a feature put out on more than 3,000 screens. Paramount Pictures, which is still licking its wounds from Miguel Arteta's disappointing Like A Boss, definitely can't be happy with the results, and will have to hope that Jeff Fowler's Sonic The Hedgehog (February 14th) and John Krasinski's A Quiet Place Part II (March 20th) will make up the losses.
In the milestones department, it wasn't reached in the past three days, but J.J. Abrams' Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker has now made over $500 million domestically, its worldwide total standing at $1.058 billion. It remains the lowest grossing title of the Sequel Trilogy here at home, behind both Abrams' Star Wars: The Force Awakens ($936.7 million) and Rian Johnson's Star Wars: The Last Jedi ($620.2 million).
Coming up on Friday, as alluded to, we have just one title arriving in wide release, but it's a significant one. The DC Extended Universe is expanding with the arrival of Cathy Yan's Birds Of Prey (And The Fantabulous Emancipation Of One Harley Quinn), and expectations are high for the R-rated action comedy. We'll be back next Sunday to analyze how everything shakes out, so be sure to tune in then!
